Jan 25, 2006 5:40 PM

"State of War" Blogging: Sheikh-y Intelligence

Add this humdinger to the revelations from James Risen's must-read State of War. The CIA use of torture techniques on the highest-value terrorist in captivity -- 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- led him to make false confessions.

The problem with torture, of course, is that it works until it doesn't, until the captive stops telling you what he knows and starts telling you what he thinks you want to hear. Such false intel helped get us into the Iraq War in the first place, as an Al Qaeda captive was tortured into confessing the terror network had chemical weapons ties to Saddam, when in reality no such links existed. One shudders to think how we've been misusing the false intel from Mr. Mohammed.

(From page 33):

According to a well-placed CIA source, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed . . . has now recanted some of what he previously told the CIA during his interrogations. That is an enormous setback for the CIA, since the debriefings of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had been considered among the agency's most important sources of intelligence on al Qaeda . . . . Any recantation by the most important prisoner in the war on terror must call into question much of what the United States has obtained from other prisoners around the world, including those from Iraq.

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